Implementation of a novel, longitudinal curriculum across multiple communities focused on understanding the impact of social factors on health and disease at the point of care

Project Summary

The purpose of this project is to train primary care residents to use tools that can personalize care by assessing patients’ environment and barriers to healthy living to healthy living can help shape counseling options and care plan discussions.

Residency Curriculum Assets

This project assess the implementation of a longitudinal SDOH residency curriculum that includes geocoded health resource data literacy components along with practice tools for implementation. Clinical teaching will be based on data generated through a joint effort between the Northwestern McGaw Family Medicine Residency (NMFMR) program and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Community Health Resource Navigator.

This system, developed through the Robert Graham Policy Center, allows input of a patient’s address from the electronic health record with subsequent generation of both predefined and user defined community resources at no cost to AAFP members. Additionally, the CDC 500 Cities project will be incorporated into our discussions of community resource assessment, as one of our sites is in Waukegan, which is included in this database.

Supporting literature:

  1. Reust C, Longitudinal residency training: a survey of family practice residency programs. Fam Med 2001;33(10)740-5.
    Donaldson MS, Yrody KD, Lohr KN, Vanselow NA, eds. Primary care: America’s health in a new era. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 1996.
  2. Borrell-Carrio F, Suchman AL, Epstein RM. The biospychosocial model 25 years later: principles, practice and scientific inquiry. Ann Fam Med. 2004;2(6):576-582.
  3. Steiner, BD et al. Primary care physicians’ training and their community involvement. Fam Med.1999;31(4):257-262.
    Stange KC, Ferrer RL. The paradox of primary care. Ann Fam Med. 2009;7(4):293-296.
  4. Ogur B, Hirsch D. Learning through longitudinal patient care narratives from the Harvard Medical School-Cambridge Integrated Clerkship. Acad Med 2009;84(7):844-50.
  5. Ogur B, Hirsch D, Krupat E, Bor D. The Harvard Medical School-Cambridge Integrated Clerkship: an innovative model of clinical education. Acad Med 2007;82(4):397-404.
  6. Bachofer S, Velarde L, Clithero A. Laying the foundation: A residency curriculum that supports informed advocacy by family physicians, Amer Journal of Prev Med 2011;41(4) S312-13.
  7. Kaprielian, VA, et al. Teaching Population Health: A competency map approach to education. Acad Med. 2013;88(5):626-637.
    10.Westerhaus, M et al The necessity of social medicine in medical education. Acad Med. 2015;90(5):565-568

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